The postillion was struck by lightning

( The State of the Doily )

This doily will not end! It only takes me about five minutes to work from one wheat ear motif to the next, but there are 12 of them, so it takes me at least an hour to do a round. So. Excruciatingly. Slow. I'm on round 19 of 24, so I'm very close to being finished.

It's so big, too. The pattern called for size 30 thread, and I think I grabbed size 20 instead. Meep! Mom and I are trying to figure out what the hell I can block this one, because I think it's going to be close to 20 inches in diameter once it's starched and stretched.

Isn't it pretty, though? I wish I liked decorating with doilies, because I'd make myself one. I'm thinking about adapting the wheat and grape motif for straight crochet to put on a petticoat hem. Because wouldn't that be amazing and lovely and ostentatious?

Also, my order from Elann arrived today. I feel dumb for taking pictures of yarn from freakin' Elann -- it's not like it's super special or droolworthy or anything -- but I'm so excited about my new yarn.

( New yarn! )

The pink and the black sport weight is for reknitting those bicolor mitts I made in worsted weight. They are just too chunky for me to be satisfied with. They should be more delicate, and the sports weight should be light enough to do that, without taking forever to knit.

The burgundy is for my Butterfly dress. Oh, yay for laceweight! It's so soft and lovely that I want to cast on for a shawl or something right now. But no. I will wait until I can visit it the library and get the pattern (because buying the book that dress is in would result in me buying more yarn), and then I will make the pretty, pretty dress (once I figure out how to modify it to make it look best on me).

Does anyone think this hat is sufficiently 1920s enough to work as a garden hat? Here it is on Ravelry.

It is kind of cloche-like, but it is a modern pattern and it's crocheted. Has anyone run across any crocheted cloches from the 1920s?

I'd probably end up using mercerized cotton for it, since that's easily accessible around here and I like the shine. The Drops Paris that is suggested is cotton and is listed as aran weight on Ravelry, but the hook size is only 3.5 mm/size E, which is a little small for aran. The Garnstudio site says it's worsted, and that sounds better.

This is a public service announcement about trusting the pattern. Always trust the pattern. Don't try to proactively fix it. You will be wrong, and forced to rip out hundreds of stitches. Really. Trust me on this.

Enter the Delicate Doily, a.k.a. my grandma's Christmas present.

( 3 pictures, much woe )

Putting off ripping out the doily, I picked up my sister's stole. Within three stitches, I discovered that some plies in the strand of yarn had broken, so I had to tink back to the beginning of the row, cut the yarn, rejoin it, and re-do work I had already done. Lame.

I was knitting along happily following the rejoining of yarn, reading my knitting instead of the chart, when I discovered that I had messed up in a serioius way on one repeat in the middle of the piece. Unfortunately, the mistake had been made eight rows/1064 stitches ago, but the pattern for that section was such that reading my knitting didn't let me notice the mistake, because I was either purling across a row or yo k2tog within a border of knit stitches.

I'm tempted just to drop the stitches on the repeat, and knit that section back up correctly, but I don't know. There's room for a lot more catastrophes with that approach, even though it would be less work if it succeeded. The reason I'm thinking about doing that is that the pattern repeat is 63 rows long, and I'm halfway through a repeat. My last lifeline was at the beginning of the repeat, so I'm not keen in ripping back that far.

Man, I just cannot win at lace lately. I'm dropping stitches, breaking yarn, and just generally making mistakes that I normally don't. These are not difficult patterns! I am capable of doing this without doing this!